self-improvement – Page 2 – …my temporary assignment.

Self.

In order to acquire self mastery, you first need to employ self-discipline.

Once on the path to self mastery, your opportunities will multiply. You will be working from a foundation built for achievement, the pursuit of excellence and eventually – success.

Yet mastery of self is entirely and exclusively reliant on your attitude.

A positive attitude will provide you with safe passage. It prevents you from treading down an ever slippery slope of largely self induced emotional blackmail. It guards you from living down to low expectations. Protects you from acquiescing to the laws of just being average. Settling for whatever happens to come your way.

If you neglect to master your attitude first – you run the risk of limiting or losing the potential that exists in you; in that moment and in the future.

A lack of vigilance when it comes to your attitude can turn you against yourself.

Pitting opportunity against expediency.

You can become your own worst enemy. Choosing the easy way out.

A route that has led many to react rather than respond.

A decision to let emotion and pride rule the day. A poor attitude can and will run roughshod over your talents and aspirations before you even know it.

Especially when it comes to responding to even the smallest bit of adversity.

It can happen in an instant, perhaps in a sequence that goes something like this:

“Crap.

Why me?

Why can’t anything ever be easy, or work the way I want it to?

Why does this always happen to me?

When am I going to catch a break.

I cannot do this any more.

I wish I was somewhere else.

Why can’t this day be over?“

You see what can happen in the span of about 60 seconds?

You can react and send yourself plummeting off the deep end to drown in self pity, defeatism and despair. Yet if you can find it in yourself to respond, to be positive, you could end up carrying that same load in this fashion:

“Wow!

A challenge made just for me.

A chance to test myself again!

I must get all of these opportunities because I can handle them.

When this one is over, I hope I get another chance to reveal my character.

I can do anything if I give it my best !

I am going to make the most of this moment !

An opportunity like this may never come again.

I am made for this. ”

See how that can work for you?

It is how you choose to carry it.

Respond.

And master self.

Choose.

I want to circle back to a gem I love from James Allen:

“Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will affect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.”

This is a keen insight, built upon thought, habit and circumstance. A genuine pattern of consequence with a lasting resonance. An interconnectedness solely made by and accountable to you. In certain respects, how your character is woven into a pursuit of excellence.

Then, how you choose to follow a suggested path governed by three simple questions.

#1 What thoughts hold you back?

Is it fear?

Like it isn’t within you to start? Or is it the avoidance of commitment; that it is too much to see it through. To finish.

Perhaps it is all about the unknown. The possible uncertainty of the outcome that dogs you. The daunting spectre of disappointment. Discouragement’s inherent distractions. Disapproval. And ultimately, defeat.

Maybe it is the fickleness of change. A need for security. The inability to trust. An aversion to honesty or criticism. Selfishness. Arrogance. Ego. Misperceptions about the call for leadership. Misconceptions about its demands for constant, unrelenting accountability, presence and effort.

And despite your efforts at containment, your thoughts rarely remain secret.

Your doubts are truly, traitors.

By word or deed, they make their way to the surface. A little here, a little there. Followed by a hitch, the glitch, the sticking points, avoidance. Soon, all at once, you become an open book. Your once private thoughts, come to govern habit, control action, impede achievement and prohibit excellence, all in a very public manner.

#2 What are you willing to do to change?

Not simply a change for change’s sake. But renewal with the highest intention. The reclamation of a positive and fulfilling future through the development of the requisite and lasting habits of this instant.

Making the choice to acknowledge, address and act upon constraints now – that prevent you from maximizing your capacity in the moments yet to come.

Engaging in an intensely personal process of assessment, evaluation, reassessment, reevaluation, until the change you aspired to achieve has been accomplished and received.

Preparing yourself to begin the work, commit the resources, and transform the internal obstacles of your own creation into a method of optimizing opportunity and enhancing abilities, forging a path for your own pursuit of excellence.

Mustering a level of will, faith and fortitude to maintain and nourish sustained level action.

Finishing. No matter what.

#3 – What will be different?

What will you endeavor to become while on this path ? Who will you be once you get there?

How will you fit into a much bigger picture? What will your impact be?

And then once you get “there”, where do you go from that temporary point?

Crucial questions, requiring thought, fully employed vision and an honest examination of intent.

All of which leads to choice. And then, ultimately transformative action. The very mass of your character, woven into the fabric of excellence.

There can be no secret to this pattern that you designed, made and upheld.

Nor to the circumstances that only you helped to create.

Essentially, it all comes down to these three questions.

And, how you choose to answer them.

Choose wisely.

Doubt

Mr. Shakespeare once wrote: “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

Words which speak of an inner conflict common to us all. A hand to hand combat engaged from within. When aspirations to become and achieve come in conflict with the risk associated with escape from your current reality.

When dreams are overrun by a phalanx of “common sense” and the little voice that whispers “Yes. You can.”, becomes shouted down by, “What in the world are you thinking?”.

Yes, our doubts are traitors.

Made to betray our efforts, our commitments and our character.

Our doubts seek to cajole and finesse one into believing your best interests lay in accepting the security that might reside in the present instead of embracing the possibilities of what you can make to follow.

Our doubts twist events and circumstances so the only perspective is negative. Presenting an appearance that consequences are more evident and abundant than the opportunity that always resides on just the other side.

Our doubts are the comforting arm around your shoulder you seek when you fail – before you even attempt to try. They are the self generated distractions designed to let you off the hook. The white noise of rationale, excuse and drama.

James Allen once put it: “Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself.”

Yet we fail to realize that within that very same armory are housed the dies of your salvation, opportunity and excellence.

For man “…also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought….” (James Allen “A man thinketh”)

Doubt is ill suited to thrive when exposed to these elements.

Doubt dissipates under the brilliance of vision and aspirations.

Doubt will succumb to the intensity of purpose with intention.

Ultimately, doubt is excised by excellence.

So begin now.

Cast the dies that will forge your tools.

– Choose to live as “who” you see yourself being.

– Act as “what” you intend to become.

– Imagine you are already “where” you dream of going

Equip yourself to persist and persevere. Press beyond fear, dispense with the drama and accept expectations.

Allow that “you just know it” sensation to take hold, and embrace a level of faith that will enable you to overcome an inertia borne of skepticism, reluctance and doubt. All the while generating palpable momentum, a sustaining source of strength and a heightened level of confidence.

In a collaborative effort of thought, choice and deeds, each working in concert to affirm a blueprint of how you will conduct yourself and pattern your life.

So be true to yourself with a firm and resilient loyalty.

Never abide the treason of doubt.

Ever outward.

“The first act of leadership is coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become.”

FENWICK W. ENGLISH

To lead others, it is necessary that you are first able to lead yourself. A task that can get the best of most, if you are not quite sure “who” exactly it is that you are leading.

Coming to grips with yourself – each facet that makes up the “who” you are – demands a high level of self awareness, unvarnished honesty and a measure of forgiveness. Once you have completed a thorough, yet loving, self assessment then you are in a better position to begin the work that is needed to make a present reality meet the future vision.

Each of us is a work in progress.

For there is always capacity for growth, improvement and actualization. Besides, becoming what you were intended to be isn’t an overnight affair. Never. It takes time, guts, perseverance and a measure of “want to” to will yourself into becoming the best version of that person you see in the mirror.

As time goes by, it won’t just be you seeing that reflection. Others will be drawn in to take a look too and see what the fuss is all about.

Through seeing you, witnessing and experiencing your efforts, they will want to try to embrace a glimpse of what could be them should they choose to follow your lead. They will want to learn, understand and then share in that very process. So that they know from the source how one can shape and will oneself into that best version of themselves.

They will welcome and benefit from seeing you fail and learning from your mistakes so that they may do the same. They will relish and appreciate the wisdom you provide on your journey as they work towards their own goals on theirs.

Leading yourself first in an open and honest fashion ultimately leads others to do the same.

Shaping all by acts of a conscious will into what you choose to become.

So they may as well.

Forever spreading ever outward.

Focus.

It was once said that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the choice you make in the face of fear. Similarly, focus does not exist in the absence of distractions – it exists in spite of them.

Focus, then, also represents a choice. The decision you make to maintain and hold fast to your “vision” regardless of the situation, temptation or challenge.

It is highly unlikely that you will ever find yourself in an environment totally free of distractions. You can always count on something to be there to draw your attention, pick away at your resolve or make you second-guess your intentions, abilities and actions.

Distractions – especially now – are going to be more than abundant.

Some of these will present themselves as the self-inflicted variety. Usually born of doubt.

The ones you create and then tell yourself. You know, those little white lies that excuse the failure you are ultimately setting yourself up for. The rationale you use to lessen expectations, dim the light of your talents and diminish your purpose. The fiction that only serves to deflect attention from performance.

The prose that is generated to soften the blow when you tell yourself that you are not quite up to the challenge, because you think it might require too much of you. All because you choose to allow doubt to wedge its way into you.

Then there are those distractions that will act to divert your focus from the outside in. Perhaps it is your peers chipping away at your self imposed discipline, sacrifice and commitment. Or the press and the punditry that look to fill their space with copy and your head with nonsense. The chirping opponent looking to draw a flag.

A hostile playoff venue to take you out of your game. If you allow yourself to succumb to these types of “noise”, your eyes may come off the ball. You might lose your way. Failure may appear.

You have the ability to overcome these distractions, maintain your focus and relentlessly pursue your vision.

But this talent needs to be exercised regularly. Your ability to choose to remain focused in the face of distraction can become powerful – but only if you consistently challenge yourself to do so in all cases.

Confront every distraction and put it in their place. Recognize their origins and intentions. See them for what they usually are – self-doubt.

Keep your eyes on the prize, your head in the game and your heart full of purpose.

Focus.